Conservative party

Tuesday

Katy Balls

What’s wrong with the 12 new Scottish Tory MPs?

Although the snap election result was disappointing for the Conservative party as a whole, there was reason for celebration north of the border. Ruth Davidson led the Scottish Conservatives to unprecedented success, with 13 MPs elected in total. Now that David Mundell is no longer the Tories’ only MP in Scotland, the Secretary of State for Scotland is finally spared the embarrassment of not being able to fully staff his office. So, which of the new intake of Scottish Conservative MPs will fill the vacant ministerial post in the Scotland Office? None of them, it so turns out. Apparently not one of the 12 pass the test. Instead, Ian Duncan – the Scottish

Monday

James Forsyth

The Tories desperately need new ideas to keep Corbyn out of power

Every discussion with a Tory Minister or MP now ends up with a go through of the runners and riders for the leadership. But just as important as the personality is the policies. One of the major problems for the Tories at the last election was that they had almost no positive offer; what did they offer a thirty something on fifty thousand a year who didn’t stand to inherit anything? Tories can’t expect young people to be capitalists, when they have no capital. This makes the need for new ideas on the centre-right a matter of some urgency. Without them, Jeremy Corbyn—or someone very like him—will be Prime Minister

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Please can the bullying of Theresa May stop?

We all remember it from school, whether as perpetrator, or assistant of perpetrator, or victim: the moment when everyone turns against another pupil and it becomes legitimate to be vile to her. When she is ‘down’, it becomes more and more enjoyable to torture her and to find endless new aspects of her to be woundingly vicious about, every hour of every day. It has been like this for Theresa May in the last week. She’s the outcast in the playground, knowing that if she so much as opens her mouth to say something, she’ll receive a torrent of withering sarcasm. Please can it stop? It leaves a nasty taste

Saturday

The Spectator

No, the election was not a rebellion against Brexit – or ‘austerity’

The lessons to be learned from the Conservatives’ poor showing in the election could fill more pages than the national curriculum. Don’t unleash on the public a manifesto which has not even been tested among senior ministers. Don’t think you can get through a seven-week election campaign by endlessly repeating the same mantra, especially when you are being ridiculed for it. Don’t underestimate how quickly public opinion can change. Sell yourself, your party and its ideas, rather than just attacking your opponent. Yet there is a serious danger that Theresa May and the rest of the Tory party could pick up the wrong message. There is a growing narrative that

Friday

Ross Clark

Trying to turn Grenfell Tower into a morality tale about the rich and poor stinks

Who would want to be a political leader in the wake of a disaster such as that of Grenfell Tower? If you show up and hug the victims you run the risk of being accused of opportunism and obstructing the emergency services in their work; if you stay away from the site you will be accused of callousness – even if you are spending your time working on the practical issues relating to the event. But there is a very strong emerging narrative: that Jeremy Corbyn got it right by turning up and sharing the grief of the victims, and that Theresa May got it horribly wrong by restricting her

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Those who died at Grenfell Tower were the victims of bad government

Had the Grenfell Tower tragedy befallen one of the millionaire high-rises built along the Thames recently, it would still be a catastrophe that shocked the country and the world. But what makes this disaster so numbing and sickening is to see, in the faces of the dead, some of the most vulnerable people in our society. People who were, in effect, in the care of the state – that is to say, in our collective care. If we pay taxes and vote, we’re part of a system that’s supposed to devote the greatest attention to those in greatest need of government help. And on Tuesday night, dozens of them were

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May is failing to learn from Gordon Brown’s mistakes

One of the truisms that has emerged from this election is that maybe Gordon Brown was right to veer away from calling an early election after all. Pursuing a snap election turned out to be a grave error for Theresa May, and so perhaps the Labour Prime Minister was wiser than everyone gave him credit for at the time. But while this may seem obviously true, what has actually happened is that May has confirmed her similarity to Brown. The latest YouGov polling on May’s personal ratings reminds us that both reaped a severe punishment for going anywhere near an early poll, regardless of whether they followed through and held

Thursday

Taki

High life | 15 June 2017

I was busy explaining to a 23-year-old American girl by the name of Jennifer why the election result was not a disaster. She is a Spectator reader and wants to work in England, preferably in politics. She called the result the worst news since her father had abandoned her mother. I begged to differ. Actually, it was a far better result than it would have been had the Conservatives won a majority of 100, I told her. She gasped in disbelief, but soon enough she was hooked. Do not be alarmed, dear readers. I have not taken LSD. Nor am I suffering from populist-nationalist rage at global elites and starting

Toby Young Toby Young

Nick’s a visionary – he deserves a second chance

I first met Nick Timothy in July 2015. He had just been appointed director of New Schools Network, the free schools charity I now run, and wanted to talk about the future of the policy. He has been portrayed in the media in the past week as a right-wing thug, as well as a swivel-eyed Brexiteer, but that wasn’t the impression he gave as he sipped his builders’ tea. On the contrary, he was trying to think of ways to weaken the association between free schools and the Tory party, particularly within the education sector. His mission, he explained, was to create cross-party support for the policy by setting up

Nick Timothy

Diary – 15 June 2017

Nobody inside CCHQ was prepared for election night’s 10 p.m. exit poll. Lynton Crosby’s last text to me predicted that we were going to ‘do well’, which according to our expectations would mean a Conservative majority of more than 60. A late projection, based on data from the ground and Jim Messina’s modelling, suggested we would win 371 seats, giving us a majority of 92. In the end, the Conservatives got their highest share of the vote since 1983, and more votes than Tony Blair managed in any of his elections, yet still we ended up with a hung parliament. Skilful leadership may deliver stability, but the absence of an

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Grenfell Tower and the politics of needless death

As the body count rose from the Grenfell Tower fire, sensible people warned us not to rush to judgement. Activists, mainly from the left, denounced a complacent housing bureaucracy at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, and a Conservative government, which had refused in its laissez-faire way to regulate rented housing. The warnings sounded sensible. At the time of writing, I still do not know for sure why the fire spread with such ghastly effectiveness. Why rush to judgement and into print? In any case, is there not something wrong with people whose first reaction to a disaster is to take cheap shots? But sensible points can be beside

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Are conservatives a bunch of neanderthals? Some on the left seem to think so

How tragic that the country – and indeed the world – is being dragged rightwards by a bunch of Neanderthal conservatives who relish ignorance and despise experts. That, in as many words, was the argument advanced here by Nick Cohen on Monday, as well as by many others on the Left. Nick wrote: ‘…in Britain and America one trend is clear: the better-educated you are the less likely you are to vote for the right. Like Mill, I am not arguing that educated people are always clever. Intellectuals have always included fanatics and cranks among their number. But I can say this: in a country where ever more people are going

Alex Massie Alex Massie

How long can Nicola Sturgeon pretend that nothing has changed?

Is Nicola Sturgeon, not to put too fine a point on things, losing it? Just six weeks ago this question would have seemed preposterous. But that was before the SNP’s disastrous election result. Yes, disastrous. Sure, everyone expected the SNP to lose votes and seats but no-one really thought they could lose 21; no-one really thought their share of the vote would fall by 13 points or that they would misplace almost half a million voters. No-one thought their result would be so very much worse than expected. No-one includes the opposition points and, pertinently, the SNP itself.  And in response to this, what has Nicola Sturgeon said? Only this:

Ed West Ed West

The future belongs to the Left

When I was in my early 20s and quite conservative I assumed I was just an anomaly, someone who develops these traits earlier than normal, and conservatism was like baldness or impotence or the other bad things that get you in middle age; most of my friends and contemporaries would catch up at some point, because these things just develop at different speeds. Now in my late 30s I realise it’s worse than that and almost none of my friends and acquaintances are going to become more conservative; if anything, they’ve become more left-wing than they were 20 years ago, as the barometer of what is progressive and therefore acceptable

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Hands off our Ruth

At last, there is light in the north. The long Scottish Tory winter has finally ended, giving way to the freshest spring imaginable. Just ten days ago, leading Scottish Tories believed they might win half a dozen seats at the general election. Even on election night they struggled to accept the reality of what was happening. ‘Ayr? Really?’ But they did win Ayr. And Stirling. And Angus. And Gordon. And Moray. This was emphatically not Theresa May’s victory. It was Ruth Davidson’s. Now, in the aftermath of this Ruthquake, a question arises: if Ruth can save the Scottish Tories, couldn’t she do something similar south of the border? Every newspaper

James Delingpole James Delingpole

I don’t blame millennials for voting for Corbyn

On the morning after the election I was drinking coffee with one of my heroes, Sir Roger Scruton. We talked about the moment during the 1968 Paris évenéments when Scruton, who had been fairly apolitical up to that point, suddenly discovered he was a conservative. He had watched the educated children of privilege wantonly destroying the property of their social inferiors in the name of something or other, and realised: ‘Whatever they are for, I am against.’ That was the reason he has spent so much of his life since trying to develop a philosophy of conservatism as thorough, persuasive and enticing as the variations on Marxism so compelling to

Wednesday

Nick Timothy

Where we went wrong

Nobody inside CCHQ was prepared for election night’s 10 p.m. exit poll. Lynton Crosby’s last text to me predicted that we were going to ‘do well’, which according to our expectations would mean a Conservative majority of more than 60. A late projection, based on data from the ground and Jim Messina’s modelling, suggested we would win 371 seats, giving us a majority of 92. In the end, the Conservatives got their highest share of the vote since 1983, and more votes than Tony Blair managed in any of his elections, yet still we ended up with a hung parliament. Skilful leadership may deliver stability, but the absence of an

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The Tories must learn fast to avoid the chilling prospect of Prime Minister Corbyn

Nick Timothy has penned an honest and reflective piece about the Tory election boorach. It can’t have been easy to write less than a week on from defeat and his departure from Downing Street. The most important point he makes is substantive. Theresa May abandoned the One Nation vision she sketched out on the doorstep of Number 10 upon becoming Prime Minister. It was a blueprint for a modern conservatism that believed in markets but didn’t worship them, that championed liberty but also the freedom to take advantage of its opportunities. It was a communitarian Toryism halfway between Burke and Berlin — the kind of politics advocated by Robert Halfon, sacked

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The cost of Theresa May’s deal with the DUP

Theresa May’s deal with the DUP has been delayed as the government deals with the Grenfell Tower blaze. Even without the tragic events of last night, there’s reason to suggest that May’s deal with the DUP would not have been signed this week. Although the two parties are said to be finalising the ‘terms and conditions’ of an agreement, behind the scenes the DUP are driving a hard bargain as they attempt to squeeze more and more out of a beleaguered Prime Minister. There is growing anger among Tory MPs that May has misplayed her hand in these negotiations. By announcing that the Conservatives would govern in conjunction with the DUP, she made

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Tory leader runners and riders: Who could replace Theresa May?

Theresa May has granted herself a brief reprieve by saying ‘sorry’ to Conservative MPs. But while the Prime Minister’s apology won her some breathing space, in the long term little has changed: the PM’s Downing Street days are numbered. Who could be next in line to take over as the new Tory leader? Boris Johnson Boris remains the bookies’ favourite despite being badly bruised by last year’s bungled bid for the top job. The Foreign Secretary has thrown his weight behind May for now. It’s difficult though to ignore George Osborne’s assessment that Boris is in a ‘permanent leadership campaign’. Boris knows he has popular appeal on his side and his back-to-back wins